I'm on a boat

By Colin Tattum on Jul 17, 10 12:45 PM

Carson Yeung's largesse has been a striking feature of the Far East tour already.

The Blues president and owner has gone out of his way to ensure Alex McLeish and his squad have received a warm welcome, as mine host.

Saturday's scheduled afternoon off saw McLeish and two of his management team, Watsons Dave and Andy, take up an invite for a trip on Yeung's ÃÂ£8 million yacht.

It represented a definite perk of having a Hong Kong based multi-millionaire as your boss, who also treated the St Andrew's staff to cruise.

In the true traditions of investigative journalism, myself and colleague Andy Walker decided our arms could be twisted to attend as well.

Unfortunately the jacuzzi was covered, and we opted not to go skinny dipping for the risk of an international incident.

And on that note, it was just as well Blues head of retail Wayne Cowen's John Smith's-style 'top bombing' off the side of the yacht was not witnessed by the harbour sea patrols.

In the cabins below deck, Yeung had littered the walls with photographs of himself and various celebrities, and the big cheeses of Chinese.

There was also a picture of him hob-nobbing with NBA star Kobe Bryant.

It costs ÃÂ£15,000 just to fill the luxury liner up with fuel and his three-man crew couldn't do enough to attend to passengers needs.

Earlier in the day Big Eck gave another press conference, after training at the Hong Kong Stadium ahead of Sunday's opening friendly.

He was joined on stage by Liam Ridgewell, who thought I was serious when I told him he would be expected to respond in Chinese out of courtesy to questions from the local media: 'Can't they get a translator?'.

The event produced some funny moments, not least when a Hong Kong journalist asked McLeish about his likely team.

'Will the newcomer Nicholas play with last season top-scorer Jeremy to entertain the fans?'

Zigic and Jerome the men in question, of course, and the latter is to be forthwith known as Jeremy as every Chinese person who has mentioned his name pronounces it phonetically.